From the annals of “is that really the word you wanted?” from a New York Times article on steampunk:

“There seems to be this sort of perfect storm of interest in steampunk right now,” Mr. von Slatt said. “If you go to Google Trends and track the number of times it is mentioned, the curve is almost algorithmic from a year and a half ago.” (At this writing, Google cites 1.9 million references.)

Certainly I can interpret this as saying that the trend has a curve which can be generated by an algorirthm, but I’m guessing Mr. von Slatt meant something else, considering that the curve which is always zero is also algorithmic.

Tom Friedman’s recent NYT column “Who Will Tell the People?” explains why steampunk is popular in the following passage: “If there is one overwhelming hunger in our country today it’s this: People want to do nation-building. They really do. But they want to do nation-building in America.”

IMHO, Mr. Friedman has explained steampunk’s popularity: steampunk provides a nation-building narrative that seamlessly blends science, engineering, and history … with a place in it for ordinary folks … that embodies a hopeful vision of the future.

He probably meant logarithmic instead of algorithmic. But it doesn’t really make sense to be excited about logarithmic growth, so he really meant exponential growth. But if you do the actual search on google trends, you’ll see that the growth is pretty linear. One word, three mistakes.

The site is currently under maintenance. New comments have been disabled during this time, please check back soon.